Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 almost has enough development mana to be summoned onto the battlefield this summer, preceding the release of the new card set in late July. We've been given the opportunity to bring you a first look at a new card that will appear both in the digital and paper-based versions of Magic 2014: Savage Summoning. It also happens to be green, which itself happens to be the best color. Dissenting opinions in the comments will be Trampled.



Some tips from the developers:

Savage Summoning is an instant that has a couple important uses. When you are playing against a deck that has creatures attacking you, you can use it to surprise their attacking creature with your own instant-speed (flash) creature. Because your creature is cast at instant speed, your opponent will need to commit to the attack and could be accidentally running their best, but smaller, creature into your surprise. And because your creature is getting a +1/+1 counter, it’s likely to be big enough to defeat the attacker and live through it.

When you are playing against a deck with counterspells, Savage Summoning becomes an important threat. Because it makes your next creature spell uncounterable, your opponent with a counterspell in hand needs to counter the Summoning because they won’t be able to counter the creature spell. Because it’s an instant, you can cast it at the end of your opponent’s turn, which means the mana they spend to counter can’t be used on your own turn, when you can cast the creature spell as normal.

In today's news we didn't post: Mass Effect 3's next weekend event, a new Assassin's Creed 3 dev diary, and a train ride with the internet irony squad. Also today, Torchlight II was released. Between that, Borderlands 2, Black Mesa Source, and FTL, it's a wonder no one here has suddenly come down with the flu or been temporarily crippled by a freak spelunking accident. Much more below.

Mass Effect 3's Operation Patriot multiplayer event happens this weekend. Also, BioWare is now outsourcing copy writing to US politicians.
The fourth and final Assassin's Creed 3 developer diary video is up. People talk about history while others are murdered in their throats.
Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft II are finally getting an "appear offline" option. What are you hiding from, huh? You don't like it when I join your Diablo III session and complain that you teleport to town too much? And can I pls have ur crossbow pls??
First gameplay trailer for Day One: Garry’s Incident, a survival FPS featuring steampunk spiders and screaming psychedelic primates.
The Castle Crashers Steam page is up, and it's out on September 26th.
Card Hunter's PAX trailer is on YouTube. A bit belated, so now it's hunting for an apology card.
There's a new Lord of the Rings Online developer diary about the Riders of Rohan expansion.
The first Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 DLC expansion decks are now available on Steam.
Train-hype train: Train Simulator 2013 released on Steam, now with more Steam Workshop.
PvZ Zombies Gangnam Style makes us very uncomfortable.

That's today's list! Feel free to share any other PC gaming news we may have skipped.

I want to tear out my eyeballs and shove them down this goblin’s grimy esophagus. It’s pretty much the only tactic I haven’t tried in my 34 attempts to beat this campaign foe and his magically reproductive army of green ghouls.

This mind-breaking sense of frustration is quickly becoming the trademark of the Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers series, but this entry at least hesitates its assault on your patience. Like its 2012 predecessor, DotP is an offshoot of Magic: The Gathering proper—the phenomenally popular card battling game that's been around for almost 20 years—where players gain access to pre-picked decks and unlock prescribed cards to add to them, before using them to attack singular foes. It's got less pure choice than meatspace Magic, but it's also slicker and quicker to finish a game.



The first of the four PVE campaigns is a simple lineup of 10 AI bosses, each wielding one of the ten new decks you can unlock by defeating them. In between these bigger fights are mildly clever Events: pre-scripted opponents that follow a theme. In one, I “stumbled into an owl nest” and my opponent played a weak 1/1 flying owl every single turn.

The campaign is simple fun, but I reached the final boss after six hours and only nine losses. The much-hyped dragon baddie crumbled like a wet paper bag in the easiest fight of my entire run—wholly unsatisfying.



But don’t feel bad for the AI: they took their revenge on me a hundred times over in the follow-up campaign. In it, their decks are stacked with crazy powerful cards that have a suspicious habit of showing up exactly when they’re needed.

After twenty rage-inducing losses to my Goblin nemesis, I was ready to punch my monitor. After thirty, I Alt-F4ed the game client. I’ve never rage-quit out of a singleplayer game before.

On the other hand, the one-turn scenario Challenges are rewarding and well-designed to offer multiple solutions that don’t immediately stick out at first glance. Most took me a few attempts and some heavy thinking, but I always felt super smart when I figured it out.



Simpler times
The 10 pre-built decks you’re allowed to customize are all new and diverse enough to support a variety of playstyles, including milling, Sligh (unit swarm), and lifegain.

Slight UI inconveniences still plague the PC version, but a lot of small quality-of-life refinements improve the experience. The new End step made sure I always had an opportunity to play the cards I wanted—a big upgrade from previous editions—and being able to manually select which mana to tap and what order to attack blockers gave me the absolute control I crave.



The new Planeschase mode is a lot of fun, playing more like a light-hearted party game than a serious test of strategies in a four-player free-for-all. The constantly changing rules force you to change your strategy constantly—that’s fun for me, but may confound newer players.

Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers is still the easiest route into the classic card game, and this year’s is the best yet for multiplayer. Easily frustrated players should remain wary of the franchise, but even without the excruciating Revenge campaign, 2013 is worth the measly $10 investment.

As the bigger words just up there say, demos for pirate arrrPG Risen 2 and Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 are now live on Steam (thanks, Blue's News). The Risen 2 demo is the portlier of the pair at 6.2 GB, but the 1.2 Magic demo packs plenty of card battles into 1.3GB. The sequel adds new decks, puzzle challenges and a moodier table. It's worth checking out to see the layer of whizz-bang they've added to make the act of moving cards from one place to another more exciting. Magic is great, but it would add a bonus layer of danger if the cards caught fire and electrocuted each other every few minutes.